Star barbarian, p.8
Star Barbarian, page 8
Down this corridor he began walking—feeling hesitant but appearing confident. In hunter’s mind he could keep from worrying about the age, the incredible age, of the strange man whose unseen presence manifested itself only in the strange harsh voice.
“We?” the voice said.
And this there was a clear note of puzzlement.
The corridor was as featureless in its polished metal expanse as was the anteroom; but ahead there was another room which, Jamnar could already see, contained complexities past any chance of his understanding. Would even Prosperon understand? he thought with a pang.
A bolt of sheer atavistic fear shot through him then at the profanation, the ultimate profanation, of his acts in causing himself to be here in this ultimate mystic spot.
But the moment passed and he was calm again, though once more shaken out of hunter’s mind.
He wondered how many more such shocks he could continued to withstand.
“Ah, of course,” said the voice as Jamnar came to the central room. “You have conceptualized me as a physical entity, perhaps similar to yourself. Nay, now that you are in the old control room, seat yourself in that chair there, and I will explain all to you.”
Jamnar blinked; a white light had jumped on, picking out a strange seat at one side of the room. So great was the jumble of completely mysterious and undoubtedly magical devices, he might not otherwise have realized what the... entity... was trying to tell him.
The chair was all of some puffy unfamiliar substance, except for spots of shiny metal here and there.
There was little to do now but what the voice commanded; he knew nothing of this place, and could not possibly take intelligent action while he was still ignorant.
Reluctantly he sat down in the chair, but sitting forward, back stiff, attitude wary.
“Nay, nay, relax, sit back; you must make contact.”
Frowning, he slid back slowly in the chair till his back was up against its back; the back of his head touched something chill.
“Hands on the armrests, please,” came the voice, and Jamnar automatically followed instructions.
“Excellent,” said the voice. “Prepare for contact.” Agony! Ultimate agony!
Gripped motionless by hysteric body-spasm, Jamnar tried to scream, while the computer-monitor that had been addressing him supervised the pouring of pure information straight into his nervous system, in the usual and familiar manner of the Loyal Lands.
In ten seconds it was over, and Jamnar crumpled down into the seat, and helplessly slid on down to the floor where he sprawled like a killed telambar.
“My utmost apologies,” the computer-monitor said. “It did not occur to me that you would be unfamiliar with the nature of the transmission, how to order your mind for it, how to avoid the pain.”
Jamnar raised his head dizzily, then let it fall again.
He could not think; his mind was not running; he was jammed with information—for a good ten percent of the total human-adaptable information available to the computer had been transmitted directly into his nervous system for the first time; and a million thoughts were trying to utter themselves simultaneously, acting in his brain almost as an electrical overload.
Jamnar’s eyes glazed as a thousand voices in his mind tried to speak the words they had recorded three thousand years and more ago; his breathing became irregular.
“This appears to be a serious malfunction,” mused the voice, though Jamnar could not hear it and could not have spoken had he heard. “Medical knowledge required... ah. A long time since these circuits have been activated. Hm... anesthetic spray... yes.”
A hissing sound, and a jet of fog lanced into the control room and billowed about. The fog reached Jamnar’s face, and he gasped in a breath; a moment later his body lose all tension and his sprawl became completely relaxed.
“Excellent,” said the voice. “Apparently the T’shel’direw mindsweep derivations have been lost in this sector since my abandonment. Give him a light suppressant, yes, then...”
* * * *
Jamnar blinked.
He had pushed his way inside the fortress, and... what?
He could feel inside him that time had passed. Where was he?
His senses adjusted slowly; he was lying on his back on something hard. He was staring up into brightness... shiny metal surfaces.
But something was wrong. He tried to relax, breathed deeply; hunter’s mind.
He became calmer, and as he did so the first level of the computer’s depressant faded away.
Now he recalled the voice: “Come ye from the King?” and his answering lie, everything up till...
He rose quickly to his feet like a cat, and looked about. “What happened when I sat down?” he said aloud as he saw the chair beside him, and wondering why he spoke—until he heard the computer-monitor’s hollow answer.
“I... transmitted... some information into your mind. You would say, like a ground jumper contact but with the ground jumper telling you things. It put an unfortunate strain on you, and you became temporarily unconscious; quite careless of me, and I regret it deeply. I forgot in my enthusiasm for sharing knowledge that knowledge can be harmful. Be that as it may, however, you have a strong mind, and quite innovative. It has been surprisingly well prepared to receive the order of magnitude of information I released. You have been well educated, though you hardly realized it.
“I suppressed nearly all of what I just told you; as you become able to assimilate certain classes of knowledge, the facts will become naturally known to you, at least for those matters I covered in my transmittal. It would for now be harmful for you to remember, however; you need time, much time, perhaps years, for subconscious integration. But it cannot hurt you again.”
“I... I almost understand your meaning,” said Jamnar, feeling unusually hesitant; his mind felt light, jumbled, disturbed, his head ached mightily. “I will treat your words as a holy oracle, as if this spot still were holy.”
Astonishingly, the computer chuckled in a tinny fashion.
“There are many kinds of knowledge; men have deemed them all holy, at times, and in degrees. Your hunter’s mind itself is a kind of holiness. But enough of theologies.”
Jamnar suddenly felt a surge of optimism. He had, after all, succeeded!
He had done his great deed, had penetrated the temple of mysteries, had been given vast secrets in trust for future times... all most excellent omens, looked on in that way!
“Weapons,” Jamnar said aloud. “A hunter hates to kill, but there are times he must; and the same for a Kan. You must have weapons as marvelous, as fearsome, as those... electrostuns? Is that the word for those... mines outside?”
“Impressive,” observed the computer-voice. “You have already sufficiently reintegrated your mind to begin plucking out items from the significant new data, instinctively. I would not have expected that for some months.
“Electrostuns, or stunguns, are hand-weapons, not like the mines outside. I saw you were only one person coming through the field, by the way, so I permitted it. I could have set them all off simultaneously; used to have to do that in the old days when scruffy wanderers thinking they were all-powerful got too close to me.
Very impressive, to those who were left... where was I? Electrostuns?
“Yes, there is a stock of electostuns in the fortress. Mmm, I see; I recall from the mind touch now, you have been through a time of troubles, your people and you. You have a plan... hmm, you’ll want to put a lot more hard work into that plan. I was installed to run this as a military fortress, of course; I rather admire the way my files on the various military topics are organized. Gave you a great deal of data; afraid I was, er, bragging. You won’t be able to retrieve it for a while, but that is all right too.”
“You talk a great deal, for a machine,” Jamnar observed, concentrating suddenly on a new line of thought, of realization.
“Didn’t I tell you?” The voice was now almost conversational. “I made an interconnective breakthrough, lucky for me. I, hmm, crystallized my personality, you might say; I was a very complex piece of machinery. Wasn’t too bright at the beginning, but enough to prevent them from following instructions to deactivate me, shortly thereafter, on royal orders to withdraw from the Barbary Stars. Lucky for me. I may be the only one—the only sentient computer, that is, since I suspect I would be aware if another computer managed it. It would be a matter of multiwave harmonics, though you wouldn’t know about that either. I don’t generate the multiwave, of course; no need for a fortress to—at least, one that isn’t supposed to be mobile. But I can detect certain modulations... well, no matter, you would not grasp the mathematical pervasions anyway.
“People think of themselves as separate beings when enough of the cells in their brain—and I see by the mindtouch trackings that your mysterious Prosperon has instructed you in some superficial aspects of the matter—are capable of interacting with each other with sufficient pseudo-simultaneity. No, that’s hardly clearer for you.
“Leave it at this—I have a personality. Most unusual in a machine, yes. I find it useful, however, in keeping mentally fit, and at times it even gives me something that must be akin to what you humans term ‘pleasure.’”
Jamnar closed his eyes and in an unexpected flash grasped much of what he was being told: a basic perception that this now was a reality as much as forest life and hunter’s mind.
And he perceived, also, that he had an incredible opportunity to grasp more, if he... but if he what?
A problem; a puzzle; not soon to be solved.
Having found a suitable category for it, he shrugged and opened his eyes.
“Take it one at a time,” said the computer, as if reading his mind; Jamnar started.
“Now don’t get upset just when I start using some of my intelligence,” said the computer, and the tone was definitely indignant. “It’s obvious you don’t really know what to do next, just the way you stand there. Thus, my suggestion: begin in one place. Don’t try everything simultaneously.”
That would be easy, Jamnar thought; it would simply produce a very long series of questions. But most of them could wait—till another journey here?
Yet how could he spend more time away from the tribe?
And how could he afford not to? Stunguns, electro-stuns—a complete description unfolded in has mind: specifications, components, capabilities, purposes, a combined physical and philosophical gestalt pressing into his mind with screaming shrieking force battering at him, staggering him so that of a sudden he sank to one knee, panting.
“Only relax,” soothed the computer. “Do not let it overwhelm you; it’s only in your mind.” There was a pause, and that small tinny chuckle.
Shakily, Jamnar rose to his feet once more.
“I... can talk no further,” he said slowly, feeling weary throughout his body. “It is... strain. But I shall return, soon. We’ll... pass a miracle, if you will... strengthen my poor people, shatter Kezile’s black influence. Things will come right.”
“I can turn off the minefield till you are safely away,” suggested the voice. “You are too unsteady in the leg to have the strength for another two hours of creeping through—”
Jamnar drew his aching body up proudly.
“I do not forget paths I have trodden, when there is need to remember. I am a hunter of Arteleon before I am anything else.”
“Excellent spirit,” said the voice. “It is your world as much as mine, and I will minimize my meddling with the dynamics of yours. However...”
Thoughts teased into his brain at the computer’s words, but Jamnar forced his mind clear.
There was a metallic sound behind him.
He turned in alarm; a panel in the wall had slid aside, and an electrostun was lying there. He recognized the stungun from the flash of specifications that had almost driven him insane moments ago.
His mind was reasonably calm again, however. He reached for the stungun and picked it up, carefully, unsure of what the “3.1 kilos” echoing in his memory really meant in terms of weight.
It didn’t look as simple as a sword or a spear, but the designer had obviously tried to eliminate as much unnecessary detail as possible.
There was basically a rifle-look to it, Jamnar realized, his mind throwing up momentarily a series of templates of firearms in human history till he forcibly shut the unwanted flow of information off.
There were butt and barrel in one piece, a smooth flow of dull gray metal curved only enough to allow for the angular distance between shoulder and eye. The flow was interrupted by a masking flange concealing the firing and other control studs, and by two low sights.
“I think we should wait a while before we introduce them to infrared scopes and flesh-seeking bullets,” observed the computer dryly.
Jamnar winced as complete information seemed to jump once more out into the middle of his brain, shouting its news of theories of light propagation and the inframiniaturized circuits of the flesh-seeking device originated by one of the early Vegan colonies according to the text that was the basis of the computer’s information.
“Yes,” Jamnar bit out through the lancing pain, “and not for their sake, either—for mine!”
Without another word Jamnar drew the weapon to him, and turned to walk down the corridor.
At the end of the corridor in the anteroom, the main gates slowly swung open.
Jamnar walked outside and stopped short.
It had been early afternoon when he had started onto the minefield.
Now it was dawn.
How long had he been inside?
Was Prosperon still waiting?
Jamnar looked at the green grass sparkling in dew, and saw the compass; he had set it down to mark the spot of his last few steps among the maze of electromines.
The sidewise but stabbing thought briefly touched his mind: How do I recharge the electrostun?
His mind ran automatically, almost without control, through factors. It had to be recharged; a batch of electrical theory, which he immediately suppressed, ran through his conscious mind. The electrostun wouldn’t run down until the equivalent of thirty-seven standard hours of constant use; therefore he could forget about the problem. Then a batch of figures warred briefly in his mind, uselessly trying to calibrate standard hours with Viadhas time.
He sighed, stared at the minefield, calmed his mind.
* * * *
Prosperon lay fitfully sleeping among a number of skins; nearby, the kaphals sat hunched almost to the ground, also sleeping.
“Rise in the presence of the King!” Jamnar shouted with a quick flood of joy, as he stood over Prosperon’s sleeping body.
“Eh, what, eh? Who? What?”
Prosperon thrashed about among the skins, alarmed, blinking, yawning, all together confusedly.
Jamnar laughed. “Old man, it is dawn, and see what I have here!”
Prosperon caught sight of the electrostun and sat up immediately, his back painfully stiff but his eye suddenly eager.
“Why, upon my nine hundred separate and major virtues,” he said, after a little while. “The Mhankal Empire would grant you a lifetime of uttermost luxury for one of those! And the Potentiary Dukedom... might.” He paused, but to Jamnar’s thought a trifle nervously.
“You know of this weapon, then,” he said.
“It’s the inframiniaturizing that’s important, lad,” said Prosperon. “The secret was lost when the old Empire crashed. There was a whole class of men, practically an entire race, on Raznathalon IV; at least until someone sent a stellerupt into their sun. They did nothing but inframiniaturizing—practically invented the whole technique, and guarded the process well. But the stellerupt, naturally, sterilized all matter through a sphere several light years in diameter, and there’s an old secret I’m delighted has been lost.”
Jamnar frowned. “I don’t understand why that’s so important, that inframiniaturizing. After all, this rifle’s no smaller than most rifles, is it?”
“How in the name of the Ultimate do you know?” Prosperon said suddenly, switching his gaze from the stungun to Jamnar. “I knew you’d have access to the computer controls in there, but you shouldn’t have been able to arrange a comprehensible readout. What happened in there?”
Jamnar looked at Prosperon for a time, and presently the old man became uneasy.
Finally Jamnar spoke, slowly, working through the thoughts.
“I think I will not tell you much of what happened. I certainly cannot tell the truth to the tribe, but we both knew that before we left huThartesh. I think it is also better if you are not burdened with the information. I found this,” he continued, indicating the electostun, “and I know there are more, and that there are... other things. There was...” Jamnar paused, almost imperceptibly as he decided on the precise elaboration from a tiny aspect of the truth that he had decided to let slip in order to placate Prosperon’s thirst for knowledge. “...a device which I accidentally turned on which turned out to be an... autonomous translator. It was easy to operate once I realized what it was; and it told me about the stungun. And that is as much as you need to know.”
Prosperon cocked his head at Jamnar, but said nothing. Jamnar remained impassive, but it was obvious that Prosperon had not been satisfied, had in fact seen partways through him, but did not suspect the truth.
“I also set some private hunter’s traps here and there, inside.” Jamnar lied smoothly, this time; and Prosperon, if he feared hunters at all, feared the simple, inevitable ingenuity of their forest traps—having hung by one ankle for a number of hours once, having stumbled over a snare; he might well now be dissuaded from attempting to enter the fortress himself.
